


Dreams of Warmth

by melonbutterfly



Category: StarTrek: The Next Generation, StarTrek: The Original Series
Genre: Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-15
Updated: 2009-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 23:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/pseuds/melonbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Q wanted was for someone to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear-he should have known that Starfleet Captains never do what you want them to do, especially not one James T. Kirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams of Warmth

"Love?" Kirk furrowed his brow. "You took so much effort to get me here, an all you want to know is what I think about love?"

Q waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, believe me, honey, getting you here was child's play. My son could do it, and he's, what, one thousand years old? Two at most."

Kirk raised an eyebrow in a fashion that seemed decidedly vulcanic, to anyone who knew what to look for of course. "Right." He obviously told himself not to ask. "So, love?"

"Yes, love. Explain why love is destructive."

The other eyebrow joined the first, and Kirk said, "Love is not destructive. It's wonderful."

The entity threw him a glance. "I didn't expect you of all people to say that."

"Yes, well." Kirk shrugged. "Love can give you a lot of grief, but it also has the capability to soothe all your pain, to make everything alright, if you have it."

"But you don't."

"No." It was Kirk's turn to throw Q a glance, as dry and sardonic as Q's had been. "I do."

"And it's giving you pain, so, logically, you should deduce that love hurts and try to withdraw from it."

For a long moment Kirk only looked at Q, not-quite-contemplating; rather as if he were assessing the entity. "It's not the love in itself that is giving me pain. Actually, the love is the most wonderful thing in my life, and it has given me the ability to go beyond my possibilities, to do the impossible and succeed. What is giving me pain is the fact that the love is all I can ever have, of the one I love."

"Your love for him?"

"No." Kirk calmly shook his head. "And yes. My love for him is everything I can give him, and his love is everything he can give me, and it has to be enough, it _is_ enough, and yet it isn't. It's a sweet, painful balance, and it's all either of us can ever have, ever get."

"Not true. You could have everything you really want, if you dared."

"Not without giving up a part of myself—or he giving up a part of himself—that neither of us can live without. Me, us doing what would be necessary for us to be together would distort the persons we are, the lives we have, and irrevocably change each of us. Even if just one of us changed, the other would change as well, and the love we have for each other would be changed as well, distorted as well. We love each other as we are, and taking that away from him, taking myself away from him only to give him a copy, a shadow of myself would be more painful than this balance we have reached." Kirk tilted his head a little, looking at Q. "And neither of us would allow the other to do that. If we did, it wouldn't be love what we felt for each other but something more selfish; the need would be stronger than the love, and that is not what either of us really wants, or really needs."

Q tilted his head as well. "So what you have is all you can get, and that makes it alright?"

"Not quite." Kirk smiled; a tiny, bittersweet expression that spoke of pleasure and pain, like eating chilli chocolate, or like getting revenge. "What I—we—have is all we can get, and the fact that we have reached a balance makes it bearable. But there is still the fact that we want, need more, which is the heart of love. Never having enough, always wanting more. Only we can't while still staying true to ourselves, and we want each other completely—and that is only possible in the arrangement we have long since settled in."

Q wrinkled his nose in a not-quite-disgusted expression that spoke of both distaste and bittery self-irony. "Doesn't love, when not consumed or returned, fade away?"

"But we do consume, we do return. Not to the extent that is needed, but as much as possible, as acceptable for each of us. And sometimes, love never fades, no matter how much you wish it would—and sometimes I do wish it would. Of course I then hate myself for thinking that, but it happens." He shrugged, a gesture too nonchalant to fit in. "Why do you ask?"

Q looked away, opened his mouth and wanted to say "Thanks for the talk, now begone" and snap his fingers, but he didn't. Instead he did something he never would have expected, which of course was his nature; to do the unexpected. He was made of spontaneous, though less than some humans tended to believe. He said, "I have found I may have a place in me that is empty when I'm gone, and empty when I'm not, and that only a person too inadequate, too unworthy but too… too much to not own that place can fill."

"Ah." Kirk nodded. "It is love, and I have yet to find a species that does not feel it in some way, even if that way is totally incomprehensible to others."

"I don't want that," Q said, feeling like a petulant child, feeling betrayed and hurt and bittersweet and something so sublime, so sweet it cut holes into him from the inside, holes that were empty and full at the same time.

"No you don't. Yes you do." Kirk said, and the expression on his face was way too understanding, way too bittersweet and way too exquisite; it was like looking into a mirror, looking at the expression he'd wear if he were a limited human, but reality was even worse; he was a limited Q, limited by his own feelings and thoughts and knowledge, and there was nothing more horrible in the whole wide universe, and for the first time he completely understood the real motivation of those who committed suicide out of real feeling, not because of a direct cause.

And Kirk, the honey-eyes, honey-haired starship captain; the only one that Q had ever paid enough attention to without feeling like bothering him, he looked away into the vast, white nothingness and gave him the privacy and space he may have needed, may have wanted, and Q didn't send him away for a while yet.


End file.
